Clarendon House Publications

13/06/2025

Your weekly newsletter is here!
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/single-post/your-weekly-newsletter-is-here-139

13/06/2025

You’ve decided to write? Lay these foundations and you’ll be able to build a career…

You’ve decided to write? Lay these foundations and you’ll be able to build a career. 1. Treat writing as a job. Arrive at your writing space in the same way as you would arrive for a paying job-on time, and with the attitude that you need to work. Never be late. Not only will you get far more do...

12/06/2025

NEW RELEASE FROM CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS!
SPACETRUCKERS # 5: US AGAINST THE WORLD
by Andrew and Helen Birch
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/andrew-and-helen-birch
The world of Spacetruckers expands ever outward and gets deeper and even more emotionally powerful.

From robot wars to trauma and terror, from the painful tragi-comedy of Natalie Porter’s continuing adventures to the ever-richer and haunting life of Alicia Brooke, captain of the legendary but worn-out freighter Emerald Queen; from the horror of war-torn zones to the contemplation of quiet bars, from alien landscapes to strange nebulas, there seems to be no end to this vibrant, dark and fully rounded universe created by Andrew and Helen Birch. Come on a dozen more journeys into deep space and the human (and alien) heart.

Grab your paperback or Kindle version here:
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/andrew-and-helen-birch

12/06/2025

Surviving as a writer is not just about working hard - you have to work smart. ‘You have to do more’ is not as workable as ‘You have to be cleverer’. The harsh financial facts of life are what they are and trying to make a living as a writer sometimes feels like a hunt movie where you are the prey. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Here are some coping strategies…

Surviving as a writer is not just about working hard - you have to work smart. ‘You have to do more’ is not as workable as ‘You have to be cleverer’. The harsh financial facts of life are what they are and trying to make a living as a writer sometimes feels like a hunt movie where you are th...

11/06/2025

ISSUE # 77 IS HERE!
THE INNER CIRCLE WRITERS' MAGAZINE!
Things are hotting up! The Great Clarendon House Writing Challenge 2025 presents the entries for this year’s Technical Challenge - and to be honest, they’re all great! I’m glad I don’t have to vote for the top three: that’s YOUR job! Turn to page 12 to begin the adventure.

RLM Cooper tells us about her writing life and her new short story collection Islands!

‘The Shoebox Baby’ by Frank Kozusko approaches its conclusion with part 5 on page 36.

Read about the call of the wider world for Ratty in the next episode of Kenneth Grahame’s classic The Wind in the Willows.

Master Author Showcase presents ‘Wrong Train’, a well-crafted little story from our very own Warren Alexander.

Your Author Prospectus begins to pull everything together so that you can point yourself in the right direction as a writer on page 98.

And Your Biggest Challenge As A Writer helps you up the ladder to success on page 110.

You know I always say it, but there really is much more, of course!

Enjoy!

11/06/2025

You want to be a writer?

Here are five things you need to confront, if you want to succeed on that road…

You want to be a writer? Here are five things you need to confront, if you want to succeed on that road: 1. Ask yourself ’Why am I not writing right now?’ You’re reading this. You’re not writing. That tells you one things straight away: you haven’t yet placed enough importance upon being a...

10/06/2025

One of the things that hard to believe about Doctor Strange, the 2016 American superhero film produced by Marvel Studios is that it is the fourteenth film in the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe, the most commercially successful film franchise of all time. It could have been the first - it is fresh, dynamic, confident and a fitting addition to the set. Apart from anything else, it grossed over $618 million, making it the ninth highest-grossing film of 2016, with positive critical reviews…

One of the things that hard to believe about Doctor Strange, the 2016 American superhero film produced by Marvel Studios is that it is the fourteenth film in the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe, the most commercially successful film franchise of all time. It could have been the first - it is fre...

09/06/2025

In many ways, Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an early example of an Irony, a precursor of a type of literature that was to hold sway over much of the Twentieth Century. The idea that humanity is dual in nature, and that somehow a darker self waits to emerge from within the psychology of an otherwise sane man, is a powerful forerunner of the kind of psychological thriller of later decades, and the phrase ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ has gained such purchase on the imagination that it has entered the language. That fact that Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are one and the same person does not emerge fully until the last chapter, so that we confront the theory of a dual human nature explicitly only after having witnessed Hyde’s crimes and his ultimate eclipsing of Jekyll…

In many ways, Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an early example of an Irony, a precursor of a type of literature that was to hold sway over much of the Twentieth Century. The idea that humanity is dual in nature, and that somehow a darker self waits t...

07/06/2025

As previously discussed, poetry lies at one end of a spectrum: poems are by definition highly precise, usually much shorter, concentrations of meanings and sounds, regulated and shaped by the gaps, holes, absences or vacuums both in sound and in meaning which create the pulse we know as rhythm. Whereas a writer can safely use prose to transmit broad meanings, exact and intense experiences tend to move towards poetry by their nature…

As previously discussed, poetry lies at one end of a spectrum: poems are by definition highly precise, usually much shorter, concentrations of meanings and sounds, regulated and shaped by the gaps, holes, absences or vacuums both in sound and in meaning which create the pulse we know as rhythm. Wher...

06/06/2025

Your weekly newsletter is here!
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/single-post/your-weekly-newsletter-is-here-138

06/06/2025

Writers, who is it that writes?

The most infamous and annoying question asked of writers is ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ It may be annoying, but it’s worth a closer look…

Writers, who is it that writes? The most infamous and annoying question asked of writers is ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ It may be annoying, but it’s worth a closer look. Coleridge’s 'Kubla Khan' sprang from his drug-fuelled imagination intact, and would have been longer had an insura...

05/06/2025

Eliot continues the theme of reconciliation or transcendence of opposites introduced in the first two sections of Little Gidding in the poem’s third section. But whereas we have in the beginning only observed the oxymoronic juxtapositions of images, and then, in the following section, been told where they point by the ‘ghost’ of a ‘master’, in this section Eliot takes a didactic tone and is more explicit, guiding us through an argument…

Eliot continues the theme of reconciliation or transcendence of opposites introduced in the first two sections of Little Gidding in the poem’s third section. But whereas we have in the beginning only observed the oxymoronic juxtapositions of images, and then, in the following section, been told wh...